The UNESCO Chair in Education and Technology for Social Change at UOC work and initiatives take as reference the document “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” (United Nations, 2015) which underlines the commitment and the challenges to face world-wide for a sustainable and equitable development. Specifically, the Chair focuses on the Goal 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which aims to ensure, by 2030, “that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development” (SDG 4.7).

This means that education is one of the main tools for achieving a sustainable development (OECD, 2007; UNESCO, 2014) and that those countries with more educated people have generally better economic incomes and more opportunities to grow and increase the wellbeing of their citizens. In addition, technology is also providing new opportunities for access to higher education, as well as the transition to new methodologies that might help to get better teaching and better learning outcomes.

Online teaching and learning can make a huge contribution to the achievement of the aforementioned goal. It provides more flexibility, easiness of access, affordability and appropriate skills for the digital age, as well as social and economic impact in the society. However online education is always under the magnifying glass as it usually brings concerns about its quality and effectiveness.

What opportunities online education is going to provide to higher education are growing is a fact (Allen & Seaman, 2016; Bichsel, 2013; Online Learning Task Force, 2011), but doubts on this educational modality still persist. Different studies (Cavanaugh et al., 2004; Means et al., 2010; Means et al., 2013) have started to provide some evidence of its effectiveness through research, but there still is a big need of further investigation in this field, which could help to increase online education reputation.

To do this, the development of an appropriate methodology is crucial. In this sense, the work from Hattie (2008), Visible Learning, becomes a benchmark. Other studies have also highlighted the importance of the meta-analysis approach for these purposes (Borenstein et al., 2009; Field & Gillet, 2010). But considering just a unique approach could be biased and, therefore, taking into account other perspectives is highly recommendable.

Building up a methodology that can be the underlying framework for carrying out a set of research looking for evidence supporting the reputation and better visibility of online education is the main purpose of this event: organizing a Seminar with experts on this topic to get the knowledge that will provide the UNESCO Chair and its collaborators with the required skills to establish an observatory on the reputation and visibility of high quality online education.

This UNESCO Chair is highly committed to identify, analyse and disseminate any evidence or data regarding the quality, the effectiveness, and social impact and economic impact of online education. In the last two years, this Chair has fostered a long-lasting Seminar on the “Economic Effects and Social Impact of Online Education” consisting in different workshops, aiming to analyse how online education can be a driver for improving the way people can have a more equitable higher education, and to identify what might be the economic effects of greater dissemination and understanding of the contributions of online education to social development.

The good outcomes of the previous workshops have led the Chair, to organise new activities addressed to go further and deeper to identify the ways in which evidence can be gathered to know more and to make more visible the economic and social effects of online education.

The current International Workshop we are organising is aiming to know and understand the methodologies underlying evidence-based research; getting the skills to translate evidence-based research to the online education field; interacting with experts gathering data for observatories and impact of policies and strategies; and establishing the methodological foundations for the creation of an observatory for the reputation of online education, that will be evidence-based. After identifying what kinds of things could be constitutive of evidence, as it was worked in precedent workshops, we would now like to know how to gather them.

In this context, the International Seminar Evidence-based research: methodological approaches and practical outcomes. Insights for Online Education will have two parts:

This activity is by invitation only. Five experts from different international centres and observatories will present the methodologies they use to gather data and evidence for their purposes: how they work, how they design their research and how the collect the data they later use in their observatories or studies:

Every speaker will have around 30 min, to present the model they work with to the audience. Invited participants, who have participated in previous seminars organised by the UNESCO Chair on the social and economic impact of online education, will discuss with the speakers.

Open Public Session (lecture + roundtable): Will the future of Higher Education be evidence-based?

Wednesday, 22nd November 2017, 17.30 – 20.00 h.

Place: Palau Macaya, Passeig de Sant Joan, 108, 08037 Barcelona

This Open Session will start with a lecture and followed by a roundtable in which it is expected to have an overview of how evidence-driven education would be, with their benefits and possible risks, too.

Lecture:

Paul Prinsloo, University of South Africa, UNISA (Lecture)

Roundtable:

Olaf Zawacki-Richter, Karl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, GER

Richard Garrett, Observatory of Borderless Higher Education, UK

Francesca Pozzi, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, CNR, IT

Frans Kaizer, Centre for Higher Education Policy & Studies, CHEPS, NE

These two parts are very complementary and will provide valuable outputs to go forward with the research endeavoured by the Chair. As one of the milestone of this research, information about the launching of KLEOS, the Observatory for the Reputation and Quality of Online Education will be given.

If you are interested in participating to the Open Session, you can register to the event by filling this form.

On November 9, this Chair held the workshop “Collaboration between private and public initiatives in Online HigherEd: Generating more equity?”. This project launched a new research field on economics of online higher education.

The invited speakers Santiago de la Barrera, Permanent Secretary at CONETyP (National Council of Education, Work and Production) of Argentina, and Melissa Highton, Director of the Learning, Teaching and Web Services Division, University of Edinburgh, UK, with their presentations have put the basis to the lively following discussion we will report later on.

What Online Education can contribute to Capacity Building and Social Development of Students

The UNESCO Chair in Education and Technology for Social Change at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), jointly with the Penn State University School of Education (PSU), have started a research project focused on how online education institutions are moving beyond providing access and toward building students’ capabilities and societies’ capacity.

The study aims to define what going “beyond access” means, at a time when access to higher education seems to be the only important issue, forgetting or undervaluing what happens to students after having got this access.

Through a survey based on Alan Tait and Jessica O’Rourke’sSocial Justice Audit approach (2013), students from different online universities programs, initially at UOC and PSU, and later from universities settled in other continents, will be asked to define the main elements of their learning experiences, the capabilities they consider online education have provided them, and the constraints they have encountered and how they have eventually being overcome.

Albert Sangrà, Academic Director of the UNESCO Chair, and Adnan Qayyum, Associated Professor at PSU, are the main researchers of the project, in line with the research aim of the UNESCO Chair in identifying and fostering evidence of social impact and economic effects of online education.

The project has been presented in 2016 at three International conferences: EDEN (European Distance and E-Learning Network) Conference in Budapest, The Learner Conference in Vancouver, and EduTeach 2016 in Toronto. Initial findings from the survey are foreseen to be presented by the end of 2016.

A proverb says that in Japan teachers do not bow at the Emperor, because
without teachers there will not be emperors.

Far from considering whether this is true or not, having a look on what highlighted in the infographic below show that not only the teaching quality and students learning but also the quality of teachers’ personal lives must be improved.

Today is a special occasion to send our congratulations to female teachers – the majority of teachers are indeed women – who everyday push their students to take the best from what explained in the textbook and deploy what learned into the current reality, and once back home, they support their kids to do the same, between household duties and endless tests to correct.

Data is from Teachers’ Dream Classroom – the Infographic created by Edgenuity, available at http://elearninginfographics.com/

A fully-funded UNESCO Chair PhD scholarship for a research study within the theme of adult literacy and learning for social transformation is being offered at the University of East Anglia, UK.

The studentship will begin in October 2016 for a duration of three years full-time study and will cover tuition fees, tax-free maintenance grant, and research training support.
Deadline for applications is 17th June.
Please, see further details here.

For inquires:
Prof. Anna Robinson-Pant
School of Education and Lifelong Learning
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
Email: A.Robinson-Pant@uea.ac.uk

A circular room, dark light, dance, mimics, saxophone music, audio-visual projections and much more. You might think that this is a discotheque, but it is not. It is a top notch intellectual performance. Last March 19th we went to CCCB to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Hèlix3c, the “constructory” specialized in services that generate non-conventional thinking and transformative action. On the stage stood out the presence of Pere Monràs, the founder and inspirational leader of Hèlix3c.

The celebration was organized as a continuous dialogue between Pere Monràs and some of his collaborators and friends who presented Hèlix3c origins and trajectory. The event was the practical demonstration of one of their main concepts, biomimetic, which promotes nature based innovation. In this sense, Hèlix3c was portrayed as an actor grounded on a biomimetic ecosystem, in which several projects had emerged.

Our previous post described how, in some contexts, the relation of women and technology is perceived almost as a deviation of the conventional ideas of femininity. But technology is not the only field in which women are still underrepresented. A similar situation is found on leadership positions.

According to the Global Leadership Forecast 2014-2015 elaborated by Development Dimensions International (DDI): “Even with a greater academic achievement and an increased presence in global workforce, women are underrepresented in leadership and are more likely to be found in lower-level than higher-level leadership roles”.
This statement is clearly supported by Catalyst’s Women in Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. In the main US companies, women only hold the 4% of CEO positions.

“The mermaid, the witch, the femme fatale (…): these are all representations of evil women or women who have subverted the conventional ideas of femininity. Kept alive in oral tradition and hidden in the unspoken rules of society, the dangerous, evil woman lives on to define what we believe a woman should be”

These words belong to the overview of “Perceiving Evil: Evil, Women and the Feminine” edited by D. Farnell, R. Noiva and K. Smith in the frame of the alternative, unconventional, and multidisciplinary approach promoted by the Evil Project. This year, the Project will hold its 8th Global Meeting in Oxford (UK) on 23-25 September. Its main aim will be to analyse which was and which is the characterization of women with regard to evil. In their own words: “We are fascinated by stories of real and fictional women who perpetrate evil deeds, experience evil as victims, fight against evil and take the blame as scapegoats for evil that exists in the world”. Proposals for various forms of contributions should be summited by 22nd April 2016.

Beyond the idea of evil, it might seem that nowadays the relation of women with the technological world is almost a deviation of the conventional ideas of femininity. In many contexts, mainly in Europe and in the US, the participation of women in this field is completely minority and in some societies women are even perceived not to be “natural technologists”. However, this has not always been the case. As Sarah Murray describes in the Financial Times: “In the US and much of Western Europe in the 1980s, (…), women collected almost 40 per cent of computer science degrees. Today, however, the figure is 15 to 20 per cent”. Leer más

The night of January 3, Joe Bower, a teacher from Alberta, Canada, died of a sudden heart attack, a few days after his 37th birthday.

Too early, inexplicably, tragically. Still, the light and inspiration Joe radiated will far outlast him. His death is a tragedy for the family, friends, students and colleges who were close to him. But it also moved many people to express their deep mourning for this special person – a person who worked to not only create better schools but also a better world. Joes work, writings and his blog demonstrated his courage in single-handedly taking on the system and challenging the status quo. It also inspired many teachers around the world.

Members of this Chair‘s work, his fellow speakers and other participants in a conference in Barcelona in December 2014 had known Joe for only a few days. But we all immediately knew what a jewel was amongst us. His talk was so wonderfully down to earth and practical in application. In fact, it was less a speech and more of a conversation with the audience who he so naturally engaged with his logic and thinking processes – and led to joint conclusions. It was a real joy to watch him capturing attention, empathising with his audience and directing this academic forum as if it were a high-school class session! Clearly, here was a high-calibre pedagogue, a real master.

But this alone does not make a great teacher. Love and respect for children, compassion for their personal struggles and achievements, for their pain and joy – these were the qualities which made him great. As Cathy Davidson wrote, he set the bar for humanity and for our profession as educators sky high.

Joe’s human qualities, his profound honesty and his modesty are revealed by little details. He told the conference that he was not born a good teacher; in fact, he had started out a terrible teacher! On being asked why it was so difficult to get in contact with him, he confessed that when he received the invitation to come to Barcelona as a keynote speaker, he thought that was a (bad) joke and he had deleted the letter! And after all, how he could just leave his 126 students and go to Barcelona?